"Connecting"

As I sit down to nurse Kaleb, I can also enjoy some time “connecting” with my friends and family through blogs and FB. I’ve loved being able to tell my birth story, post pictures, and share my thoughts and feelings and to get responses from so many of you all within the first few days of having a baby. It’s nice feeling like I’m still involved with everything/everyone around me even though I haven’t really even set foot outside my house. . .let alone showered or fixed my hair/put on make-up, etc. It makes me wonder what it was like for my mother. I know a hundred or so years ago people lived with their extended families or very close by, so they weren’t excluded from the outside world when they were sick or had babies. But, what about just 30 to 40 years ago? It was after most people didn’t live with/near extended family, but before the internet and affordable long-distance phone calls. It’s hard to imagine how lonely or disconnected they must have felt after having babies and being home alone, or with a bunch of other little ones running around the house too. I know a lot of mothers, even now, who feel like they are the only ones who can’t keep up with the laundry, who don’t go out and do something fun/productive every day, who are tired from having interrupted sleep all night long, who dread dinner time, who feel overwhelmed with their kids who throw tantrums or teenagers who have wacky hormones, who think their kids have too much homework that really the parents have to do, etc. I just think that FB and blogs have changed that for a lot of us women/mothers. We can see that everyone else is dealing with the same things on a daily basis and that we aren’t alone in anything that we’re going through. Anyway, the internet is definitely a blessing to me and I’m so grateful for the “connections” I’ve been able to have through this medium.